Nissan Versa, Smart Car good for saving gas
With gasoline prices punching through the $4-a-gallon threshold, new-car buyers are increasingly concerned with better mileage.
Hybrids and diesels are more efficient than their gasoline-powered counterparts, but they cost thousands of dollars more. Although the fuel savings eventually will make up the difference, the higher sticker prices mean higher down payments, monthly payments and insurance bills, too.
One alternative is to shop for the cheapest new car you can find. By a happy coincidence, the least expensive cars tend to be among the most fuel-efficient.
The relatively inexpensive car that is getting the most publicity right now is the Smart Fortwo — the radically tiny, egg-shaped car from Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, which rivals the hybrids and diesels by promising up to 41 mpg in highway driving.
The name reveals the trade-off for that good mileage, however. While it may be smart for two, it’s not practical for a family — or even two people with a large dog. Its short length makes city parking a breeze, but it cannot carry much more than a few bags of groceries.
That said, the model we test-drove seemed sturdy and surprisingly well-equipped with safety features, including sensors that monitor air pressure in the tires. The seating position was high enough to offer good views on crowded freeways. And the ride was smoother than we expected, considering the short wheelbase.
The biggest problem we encountered was the odd transmission — a five-speed automatic that also has a manual clutch but no clutch pedal. In automatic mode, a computer shifts the transmission for the driver.
This proved unsettling during our test drive since the power dropped off unexpectedly when the computer chose to change gears. It also took too long to re-engage, making it hard to drive the car smoothly around town, at least without much practice.
If this was the only mode, this quirk would be a deal killer for many customers. Fortunately, the transmission also can be placed in a manual mode, allowing the driver to shift up and down through the gears by tapping the shifter or using optional levers on the steering wheel.
This makes the car a lot more fun to drive, but may reduce mileage somewhat because of the temptation to maximize the admittedly small 71 horsepower produced by the 1.0-liter, three-cylinder engine.
Even with prices beginning below $12,000, the Smart Fortwo is not for everyone. Fortunately, other options abound among the new generation of so-called econoboxes — a term coined shortly after the 1975 gas crisis to describe the wave of cheap but fuel-efficient cars that manufacturers rushed to the market.
The best of them, like the German-made Ford Fiesta, were both economical and fun to drive. Others, like the Chevrolet Chevette and Ford Pinto, were crude and boring.
All of today’s entry-level economy cars are a vast improvement over the earlier models. They are much roomier on the inside, have far more supportive seats and offer upscale options such as premium sound systems and power windows.
The engines are smaller but deliver more power and better mileage, thanks to such technological advances as fuel injection and dual overhead cam engines. And suspensions have improved so much that most of them ride like much bigger cars.
The 2008 Nissan Versa is a good example. It ranks among the newest economy cars on the market, introduced at the same time as the Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris. All three vehicles start at around $13,000 and promise more than 30 miles per gallon.
The Versa is the largest and heaviest of the three and so gets a little worse mileage, but it also offers the most interior room. The five-door hatchback feels more like a small minivan on the inside than a compact car. It offers good ride height and a surprisingly large amount of hauling space with the rear seats folded down.
The list of standard equipment is equally impressive, including electric-power assisted steering, child-safety door locks and a 12-volt power outlet.
The 1.8-liter engine delivers ample power around town, even when coupled with the four-speed automatic transmission. It only bogged down slightly on hills, a problem that the available six-speed manual transmission probably would eliminate.
The ride also was smooth on most road surfaces, although ruts and potholes caused some bucking — a typical problem for cars with short wheelbases that was not completely overcome by the car’s standard ripple-control shock absorbers. Despite that, the Versa is a rated as a “recommended buy” by Consumer Reports.
Government fuel ratings for all new cars can be found at www.fueleconomy.gov. The site even goes back a few years for those considering a used economy car.